


above all things be glad and young

by liminal



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Post-War, This is pure fluff, and i'm unapologetic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:42:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23394949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liminal/pseuds/liminal
Summary: "But it’s 8 o’clock on a warm June evening, the likes of which he almost never saw again; his stomach’s full of as much treacle tart as it can take, having not eaten much for the better part of a year; and this is what they fought for."The Burrow, one fine June evening. The calm after the storm.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley, Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley
Comments: 2
Kudos: 55





	above all things be glad and young

June is a warm month and under different circumstances, their al fresco dinners would be set against a soundtrack of laughter, of light conversation and in-jokes which run through the years, of shrieks as the momentum shifts in an impromptu Quidditch match.

As it is, they’re still getting used to being en masse, to being up one with Percy and one down with Fred. To sitting outside and cracking small jokes and breathing in so deeply their lungs might burst. To not having to hide behind heavy curtains and quiz the visitor on the threshold on the first Chudley Cannons autograph they collected. To not waiting with bated breath for the right answer before Bill or Charlie or Arthur are ushered into the sanctuary and the outside world is locked away again.

But they’re trying. 

Tonight, the sky is streaked through with pinks and orange, and the butterbeer flows smoothly. The Burrow’s wildflowers are kaleidoscopic, bunched together in mismatched jars which Ginny’s placed down the length of the table. Soundbites float out from the wireless in the kitchen, the best way they could think of avoiding the awful, unending silences that turned the house into a funeral parlour; and even Fleur cracks a small smile as the opening notes of Celestina Warbeck’s latest single drift over the long grass.

Tonight is the last night they’ll be like this, together, before Ron and Hermione leave for Australia, and every action is calculated at delaying the moment of departure.

All day they’ve been pretending not to see Molly crying in the kitchen, to see Charlie grasp his youngest brother’s shoulder as he walks past his chair; to see Harry, Ron and Hermione carrying out last minute jobs that almost certainly don’t require three sets of hands.

And now dinner’s done and calloused fingers pick at the remains of the treacle tart, and no one wants to be the first to break the spell, to leave the table and turn the night-before into the day-of.

“Are you going to be ok,” Ginny murmurs, watching her brother and Hermione slowly intertwine fingers, and Harry starts, realises she’s talking to him.

“Yeah,” he says instinctively, and chuckles at the quizzical look he gets in return. He knows what she’s asking. Tomorrow will be the first day in over a year that he hasn’t spent with at least Ron or Hermione. The first time they have a plan of action and he doesn’t. The first time he will wake up in a silent room, without Ron’s snores or Hermione’s sleepy shower singing. 

The co-dependency would be funny, if it wasn’t so frightening.

But the truth is it would have happened some day. Why not tomorrow? Tomorrow is the first opportunity for his two best friends to go off for an extended period of time when the likelihood of them being killed by Dark Magic is almost negligible. 

Harry vaguely wonders if that thought hints at some deeper problem, if his brains really have been addled. _When did you become so sanguine, Potter,_ he asks himself wryly. But it’s 8 o’clock on a warm June evening, the likes of which he almost never saw again; his stomach’s full of as much treacle tart as it can take, having not eaten much for the better part of a year; and this is what they fought for.

“Yeah. Yeah, I will be,” he eventually replies, tearing his gaze away from his two best friends to Ginny, sitting beside him. “Besides, I’ll be in good company.”

“Oh yeah? And who might that be?”

Harry grins and starts leaning towards Ginny. It’s tempting to finish what he’s started, to duck in and steal a kiss, wolf-whistles and lewd teasing from her brothers be damned. They haven’t talked about who or what they are. They spent days walking around each other on eggshells, nothing more passing between them than gentle hellos and requests to pass the juice at breakfast. Then days spent learning new scars and hollowed faces, how bones look when they jut out of skin that hasn’t seen the sun for months.

Nothing, and then all at once a blazing row over godknowswhat, and one by one the Weasleys had cast _muffliato_ until the hysteria was contained, familiar by now with the tempers the pair of them possess.

And then truce between two lovers, nothing said about it. If their dating had come as a shock to those Weasleys not recently present at Hogwarts, they didn’t say anything about it, but Bill had fixed Harry with an unusually hard look at the sight of Ginny’s head resting on his shoulder in the garden, Harry’s arm wrapped around her waist, before nodding once with a grin and a wink.

They’re not shy about countertop kisses when they’re alone in the kitchen, threading fingers through hair, and soft goodnights before bed. But there’s a time and a place for all of that, and most days they’re keeping weary minds busy with rebuilding the world, moving stone by broken stone into position at Hogwarts. They promise each other that things will be ok and there won’t be a spectre in the empty kitchen chair forever.

Somewhere, in the back of Harry’s mind, is a not unamusing thought that he and Ginny have started their own little tradition: of letting things build and bubble away, until the pressure can’t rise any further, and the whole thing explodes. A running jump across a crowded common room; quiet goodbyes in the school grounds; an argument followed by a kiss, and roughened fingers brushing over cuts and bruises they both leave to heal the Muggle way.

At some point they’re going to have to talk like grown-ups.

But for now they’re teenagers who bought the right to behave as such with blood and death.

So on one fine June evening, Harry leans in further, sees the smirk playing at the corners of Ginny’s mouth, smells her incomparable floral scent. Someone, somewhere down the table, calls, “Oi, Potter!”

“Your mum’s treacle tart, obviously,” he says, and pulls away to see Ginny caught between a grin and a glower, and the dessert plate flying down the tablecloth towards him. 

The bottles of butterbeer refill themselves and the evening rolls on.


End file.
